Break down the barriers in English education

 
By Sir Peter Lampl
 

English schools are undergoing another major shake-up as Michael Gove removes them from local authority oversight and introduces a broader range of providers. No wonder, then, that the first fortnight of the new school year has been a turbulent one. Many headteachers are angry that Ofqual, the exam regulator, regraded GCSE English papers downwards midyear. Teaching unions are threatening a work-to-rule protest over pay and pensions. And many more schools have become academies, with more control over funding, governance and the curriculum.
 
This is the battleground of English education. But another piece of news this week was even more significant. On Tuesday the OECD reported that our schools were the most socially segregated among advanced economies. This underlines the biggest problem facing England’s schools: the close relationship between family income and how good a school a child goes to. The result is that children from poorer backgrounds have fewer opportunities to move up the ladder.

English education has improved under successive governments. Standards of teaching, and especially school leadership, are better. There have been significant improvements in London schools, particularly for some ethnic communities. But this is not good enough. We have to outpace other economies, particularly in Asia, that have improved faster. The UK languishes in 25th place in the OECD’s league tables for reading and in 28th place for maths, where Shanghai is now the best in the world. This does not reflect the position of all our young people. Rather it is a stark reminder that levels of social mobility have worsened since the 1960s and remain very low, despite government investment and reform in education.

I believe one reason for this is that governments have focused on structural reform, such as creating academies or free schools, rather than on improving teaching. Yet it is good teaching that really matters. Teachers’ salaries account for four-fifths of a school’s costs and this reflects the value they deliver. Research by McKinsey has shown that the world’s best-performing education systems are those with the best teaching. The OECD now rates leadership in English schools highly, but we still have much more to do to improve teaching.

First, we need to attract more of the best graduates to the classroom. Ten years ago I helped establish the Teach First programme in England, modelled on the successful Teach for America programme. Teach First is recruiting almost 1,000 graduates this year from top universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, to teach in inner-city schools for a minimum of two years. Approximately half then leave to pursue other careers.

It has been a great success. But with 36,000 teachers recruited each year, it is only a part of the solution. In Finland and South Korea there are 10 applicants for every teaching place. Here we regard it as a success if every place is filled.

Even more important will be to improve the quality of the existing 440,000-strong workforce. Sutton Trust research shows that English schools could move into the world’s top five education performers within a decade if the performance of the least effective 10th of teachers were brought up to the average.

While improving teaching is crucial, we also have to address inequality in our education system, which has a substantial cost to society and the economy, since it prevents many of the most able children from non-privileged backgrounds from achieving their potential.
 
The best schools in England are world-class. But they are also socially exclusive. Seven per cent of English pupils go to fee-paying independent schools, which are out of reach for the rest of the population. Another 4 per cent attend the remaining selective grammar schools, which draw just 2 per cent of their pupils from the poorest households. The top-performing comprehensives – mainly faith schools and comprehensives in well-off areas – take just 6 per cent of their pupils from the poorest households. This compares with a national average of 16 per cent.
 
We should address this inequality in three ways. First, we should use random ballots to determine admissions to our urban secondary schools, rather than basing admissions on how close you live to the school or how religious you are. This would ensure a good social mix. Second, grammar schools should select more fairly, attract able students from poorer backgrounds and provide them with the extra help that better-off pupils get in prep schools or from private tutors.
 
Third, we must open independent day schools to all. Their students are 55 times more likely to win an Oxbridge place and 22 times more likely to go to a top-ranked university than a state school student from a poor household. The absence of poorer students from these universities is a shocking waste of talent.
 
My independent day school was totally funded by the local authority. Indeed, seven out of 10 independent day schools were principally state funded until 1976 through the direct grant scheme and local schemes.

Between 2000 and 2007, I co-funded a pilot scheme at Belvedere, an independent girls’ day school in Liverpool, replacing fees with admission based on academic ability. Parents paid according to means. As a result, a third of pupils paid no fees. Academic standards improved and it was a happy place for pupils of all backgrounds. Moreover, the cost per pupil was less than at the average state school.
 
More than 80 leading independent day schools would back such a state-funded scheme, which would benefit more than 30,000 able students, whose parents could not afford full fees. It would require selective admissions, which political parties oppose. Yet far from creating new selection, such a scheme would democratise existing selective schools and break down the barriers between the independent and state sectors.

Taken together, I believe that these measures to improve teaching and reduce inequality would transform social mobility and unleash a wealth of talent to fuel our economy. And they would put England in the education premier league.
 
The writer is chair of the Sutton Trust and of the Education Endowment Foundation
 
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012.